Sunday, June 21, 2009

Signature in the Cell

Denyse O'Leary can hardly contain herself 'cause Stephen Meyer's book is about to go on sale.

In case you can't wait, there's a Signature in the Cell website that explains the significance of this momentous event.

The foundations of scientific materialism are in the process of crumbling. In Signature in the Cell, philosopher of science Stephen C. Meyer shows how the digital code in DNA points powerfully to a designing intelligence behind the origin of life. The book will be published on June 23 by HarperOne.

Unlike previous arguments for intelligent design, Signature in the Cell presents a radical and comprehensive new case, revealing the evidence not merely of individual features of biological complexity but rather of a fundamental constituent of the universe: information. That evidence has been mounting exponentially in recent years, known to scientists in specialized fields but largely hidden from public view. A Cambridge University-trained theorist and researcher, director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, Dr. Meyer is the first to bring the relevant data together into a powerful demonstration of the intelligence that stands outside nature and directs the path life has taken.

...

As a philosopher and a scientist himself, having worked in the field of geophysics for Atlantic Richfield, Meyer is able to step back from the fray of competing views about Darwinian theory and offer a searching, compelling investigation of life’s beginning.

21 comments:

If this purported intelligence stands "outside nature", then nothing, absolutely nothing, we can do or think can tell us anything about it, since being outside nature means it cannot act on the "inside", where we are. If it acts, or even if it is discernable in our universe, then it is "inside".

(Just sort of working it out in my own poor head. My irony meter failed again, and let through a surge that zapped a bunch of neurons. I should know better than to read Denyse's output.)

Oh, and how does being "a scientist himself, having worked in the field of geophysics," qualify someone to expound on "life's beginning"?

The foundations of scientific materialism are in the process of crumbling.

Seriously, even if "scientific materialism" is incomplete and it needs some supernatural stuff added in there, you would still keep it, and then augment it with the supernatural whatever. You wouldn't "crumble" it. What a bunch of flippin' kook-bags, man.

This is all the fault of the reductionists. If they had realized the philosphical absurdity of talking about "codes" and "programs", creationosts would not be able to latch onto those metaphors as literal truths.

The foundations of scientific materialism are in the process of crumbling.

Except, of course, in the field of medicine. Send Meyer to the hospital with a cut artery or an acute case of diarrhea and trust me, he won't give it a moment's thought that his ass is being saved by materialistic science.

It's always the same with these clowns -- they're willing to let go of materialistic science but only when there's no cost in doing so.

Who does Meyer think he is, the Ed McMahon of Information Theory? Really, from his former life as a geophysicist, he ought to be aware of oodles of information contained in a seismic signal--where did that information come from?

Certainly. bad science is corrosive in this matter.But amateurs like you can't tell bad science. As simple as that (you probably love Dawkins but all evolutionary biologists I know laugh at his cartoonish views of evolution, including his insane addiction to the "information:" metaphor that creationists happen to love so much) )I'll give you a hint; it's the scientists with diploma and research paper, who also support ID, that gave ID its boost. The problem is WITHIn science. we need to put some order in the house.

This is why we need to fix things within science first. Scientists cannot just peddle that metapho, without stopping to explain how this is not a literal truth (but actually, a philosophical monstruosity). I don't use the metaphor (neither do the smarter scientists I know)

Mr Meyer is as stupid as he looks. If he can't understand it, then no one can, right? Read my paper on the adaptation of complexity, enjoy. And keep your smug mouth shut Mr Meyer. Stop spreading lies because you are as stupid as you are arrogant.arxiv:0901.0583

I read the book and it is fascinating, irrespective of your view on the subject of intelligent design. Unfortunately, most people discussing this book present only emotional opinions without discussing any of the factual assertions in the book or the logic employed therein. It would be much more interesting to read a reasoned debate about the content of the book, rather than an emotional tit-for-tat about its conclusions.

Medical science must assume design intent, purpose, working according to intended function vs. malfunctioning, etc. -- in other words, it must operate on the premise that the human body is designed, that organs have intended or proper functions, etc.

Otherwise, there is no reason to view cancer cells as abnormal, or "wrong", or an enemy -- they're just cells doing their thing -- no good or bad, no right or wrong. Some things live/some things die -- no purpose, design, intent, right or wrong.

It's easy to be a materialist in the abstract, but no one's an anti-theist when the doctor says there's something "wrong" with your heart, or your kidney's are "malfunctioning".

@RkBall: there is no reason to view cancer cells as abnormal, or "wrong".

Sure there is. Just because people might like one configuration or state and dislike another is sufficient for us to call that the right one and a less likable version the wrong one. I like my body without cancer, therefore that's the right way i want it to operate. Cancer on the other hand is wrong.

This probably sounds like a very subjective ethical system to someone who thinks ethical norms exist outside reality, and likely claims direct knowledge of their exact content. It's not that individualistic, inasmuch as due to the nature of our species, our environment, our shared socialization, we best function and survive in certain types of societies.

From this we can generalize to pseudo-objective norms and say that it's really wrong when people act obtuse, twist language, misrepresent medicine, and bear false witness, as you just did, because that harms our social fabric and leads to bad social decisions. It's right when those people are ignored and held as exemplars of thinking that causes suffering and imperils our world.

Seems that most naturalistic materialistic "scientists" are 99 and 44 percent "scoff" and .56 "answer" to Meyer's presentation of evidence. Typical. When you cannot argue, you yell loud and throw things and make fun.

Scientific enquiry is based on the supposition that there are logical systems and patterns that can be deduced from the study of all creation. Now that is not logical from a chaotic evolutionist's perspective. In fact logic is not logical. Random should be the byword of the evolutionist rather than ordered. Yet they just cannot see the forest for the trees.

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Principles of Biochemistry 5th edition

Disclaimer

Some readers of this blog may be under the impression that my personal opinions represent the official position of Canada, the Province of Ontario, the City of Toronto, the University of Toronto, the Faculty of Medicine, or the Department of Biochemistry. All of these institutions, plus every single one of my colleagues, students, friends, and relatives, want you to know that I do not speak for them. You should also know that they don't speak for me.

Superstition

Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerlyseemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.

Charles Darwin (c1880)Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Quotations

I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory.

The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change.

Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance.

The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat.

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is TrueI once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000
It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma
One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick
There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner
An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins
Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod
The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.